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by ilovetux 2129 days ago
I apologize, but I must disagree. Awk is literally amazing once you get used to writing actual scripts instead of trying for the ever-elusive and often-untenable one-liners.

Noone is using `python -c` syntax for constructing one-liners and i think thats helping adoption of python. I have no idea why one-liners are seen as desirable when they're often hard to read and debug.

1 comments

When I first was getting into coding while doing test engineering, this was one of my greatest complaints. The software engineers would hand me bash scripts filled with very clever, but unexplained and esoteric one-liners.

Whenever something didn't work (and it didn't, because perfectly interfacing with embedded hardware is tough), I had two options: spend literal hours on Google and Stack Overflow, or go stand outside their cubicle and hope they had time for me.

I'll take a verbose function with clearly-followable logic over an amazing one-liner with a maze of options and hacks any day.